


Even After I'm Gone

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 22:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your story ends with bazoolium.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even After I'm Gone

  
  


|

 

_"How long are you gonna stay with me?" he asks  
and you smile with  
all the naivete of someone who can see only  
the here, and now._

_"Forever," you promise  
like it's even yours to promise in the first place._

_He smiles back, and you pretend  
not to see  
the pity turning his eyes soft  
as he watches the swing of  
your twin hands._

 

|

  
  
  
  
Satellite Five and  
a basement in  
Utah. The burning rage held in  
the hearts of a man who hates them but  
loves peace, above all things.   
  
Daleks, it's  
always Daleks.  
  
You're starting to understand how   
lifelong enemies  
are born.  
  
Because of them,  
  
pepperpots aren't the only things  
you cannot look at  
without crying, anymore.  
  
  
|  
  
  
Your story ends with bazoolium.  
Well, actually, it begins to end with  
bazoolium. How it really ends is  
  
a smear of mascara about  
eye-level and a deactivated  
dimension hopper.  
  
So somewhere between bazoolium and  
the heavy, rib-breaking sobs that quake  
your heart and your body and   
bring your tear-stained cheek pressed against  
the cracked plaster of an empty white wall,  
  
you die.  
  
Later, you say: "I am the Bad Wolf,"   
just to try the words  
and instead of being reborn, you  
are given a place at  
Torchwood 3.  
  
New to this world, you know you are  
doomed to become  
the mad hatter who stands in hallways  
and whispers for a doctor. Takes long walks  
in the fields of rural England  
wearing a heavy black coat and  
moving against the wind.  
  
People will whisper and you,  
you will keep looking up at the sky.  
Hope, eternally sprung.  
  
There are worse  
kinds of crazy  
to be,  
  
You suppose.  
  
  
|  
  
  
Months after you lumber into this parallel world  
akin to the zeppelins that color your new sky, without elegance  
and with the distinct aura of doom trailing after you   
like smoke,  
a transmission flares to life  
on the shores of this world's Darlig Ulv Stranden.  
  
There is salt in your pale hair  
but your red eyes are dry  
when you ask:  
  
“Doctor?” and  
the word twists into the cold  
ocean sky.  
Lingering, sad.  
  
He inclines his hand. His smile  
is bright and careful, brittle;  
for a moment, you think of staring into the sun  
and the sharp pleasure of loving  
something that is  
dangerous but beautiful.  
  
Stories brim inside you,  
fantastic tales rising in your throat  
like tea boiling over and spilling in  
dark puddles at your feet.  
Only, you tell him random human things  
because that   
is all you know these days.  
  
And he, in turn, speaks of celestial bodies  
says that planetary gases and burning fire and energy  
have helped him to reach you.   
To cross over the limitless boundaries   
between you both  
and whisper with one last  
breath--   
  
Nothing.  
  
He says nothing that matters.   
Talks in circles  
and then squares  
To be honest, you are tired   
of the way he hides behind shapes  
  
(a big blue box, a sonic cylinder, the  
triangle of his earnest,   
mobile mouth)  
  
so you let the admission rip past your lips  
because you know now  
that you don't have forever:  
  
 _I love you._  
  
He looks startled at first, eyebrows slanting  
then, resigned.  
Impossibly tender, he opens his mouth  
and tilts back into the waves  
before unceremoniously  
  
fading   
away.  
  
You blink.  
Your heart hangs on   
the end of a thread  
that sways like  
a snapped cable on a bridge in a hurricane.  
  
There was not enough time  
to say enough words  
but is there ever time enough  
or words enough  
with a man who weaves the past and future  
into a shroud, and does not stay  
long enough to mourn?  
  
This is resolution without  
resolution.  
  
But you turn around, because what else can you do?  
(No big yellow truck or open consoles to   
save the day)  
  
and if your hand itches like  
bones reknitting themselves together  
after a devastating fracture, well--  
  
You try not to notice.  
  
  
|  
  
A memory:  
  
He kisses you against  
the wall of your bedroom on the TARDIS  
where you have pictures from  
alien worlds tacked up  
with pieces of alien Sellotape. Next to your ear,  
beams into the darkness a reflection of  
you and him, smiling like loons on   
Thyrofax, as the trace of his thumb lingers   
against the underside slope of your breast. A flick and the wet  
heat of his mouth against the distended end of the soft,   
heavy curve and you  
throw your head back  
sucking in great lungfuls of air,  
laughing as he then blows a raspberry  
into your neck.  
  
His knee separates the lush curves of your thighs  
like a boat cutting water,  
driving towards a horizon of pinks and reds  
and twilight; a setting sun.  
You sigh as he insinuates himself in you,  
his teeth biting into your  
collarbone and his pulse beating a   
raindrops-against-rooftops rhythm underneath  
your hand. The musicality of the way   
he moves with you  
is proof that  
he knows how to dance, after all.  
  
Your fingers glide through his hair  
where its sweatiest, at the nape, long and  
curling, and you try to remind yourself  
to make a note:  
  
 _Haircut in the morning,_  the snip-snip  
and silence of domesticity. Tea boiling on the stove,  
the familiar shape of his shoulders against your stomach  
as you stand behind him and master your art.  
The thought brings a smile to your lips and then  
he arches into you, a long stroke of  
something full and pleasant and so   
  
Oh. Oh.  _Oh,_  that  
all thoughts of tomorrow are driven  
away in favor of right now--  
  
This is the point when  
the memory dissolves because the dream ends  
and you wake back into the nightmare of  
missing someone so much  
that even strangers with similar hair  
or eyes or a way of walking  
can elicit the most resonant grief from the chambers  
of your heart.  
  
The dreams are the worst,  
because they make you happy  
but it is a transitory happiness and  
you are so weary of things that  
do not stay.  
  
Light from the kitchen paints  
your face a bone-white  
as you count out the sleeping pills  
and walk back to bed.  
  
The morning, you know,  
will just give you more memories to  
dream about. But for now,  
you welcome the cold, dark  
shell of temporary   
amnesia.  
  
  
|  
  
  
Life in the slow lane  
comes to an abrupt halt when  
the stars begin to go dim outside  
and schematics for  
dimension cannons start to  
litter your flat.  
  
Despite the burgeoning complicated chaos  
of the world outside,  
you're almost glad of the chance   
to discard your costume   
of Rose Tyler, twenty-something Vitex heiress.  
You can only  
play dress-up for so long,  
wearing the skin of  
some other Rose  
who wears black dresses and red lipstick,  
goes for coffee instead of tea and is   
all right with sitting down when the situation   
calls for standing up.  
  
So   
you let yourself  
unzip the slinky skirt and   
you step back into the armor   
of Rose Tyler, defender of Earth and,  
a wolf.  
  
 _More like a woman on a mission,_  Mickey jokes  
and you adore him all the more  
for what he does not say.  
  
That you and your lonely heart are   
nomadic, and   
that traveling is in your veins  
and you do not belong here  
no matter how much you love your mother  
and brother and makeshift father.  
  
And even though he   
still looks at you like he dreams, sometimes  
Mickey will tinker and tool  
until you find your Doctor once more.  
Because he loves you, and when you love someone  
you don't give up. Not ever, not even if  
it hurts.  
  
The prototype sparks  
and something sizzles through your  
blood and raises  
the hairs on your arm.  
  
Your face is a thundercloud,  
but your mind is on  
applegrass.  
  
"Again," you say,  
and you get to work.  
  
  
|  
  
  
Perhaps all love is doomed to end  
in remnants,  
made up of whatever pieces  
you have managed to salvage  
from the wreckage  
  
and once, that thought might have made you  
sad, made you think of  
the destruction that must come first  
rather than the rebuilding that must come after, but  
now, now all you can think of is  
how you much more value is added to that recovered treasure  
of love between fragile beings.  
  
Through universe after universe, you carry with you  
the dusky taste of his kiss  
as he whispered prayers into your mouth   
that even the least devout would think of  
as holy.  
And oh, how his heart, blazing in the  
wet, dark focus of his gaze,  
stole yours.  
  
There is something evocative about the way  
you touch your reflection  
in the mirrors of the houses in which you visit, the windows  
in which you stop;   
the blurry outline of your face  
traced by a single finger  
because you want to, more than anything,  
love yourself  
as much as he did.   
  
Lightning cracks  
as the dimension cannon compresses  
your atoms into  
buzzing, reality-defying things.  
You are a Goddess in these moments,  
more than any other  
gold-soaked, vortex-consumed   
instance.  
  
The ruins of your relationship lay behind you  
in some distant land and some distant time. Today,  
you are looking towards   
the reconstruction.  
  
You step sideways into a new street  
and begin the impossible.  
  
  


|

_"How long are you gonna stay with me?" he asks  
and you say, because you will always say  
no matter what you learn and no matter what truths  
the universe tries to tell you,_

_"Forever."_

 

 


End file.
